Almost

It was a near miss - I spent many days thinking about how close I was. But the opportunity was snatched away from my grasp - and it saved me.

The night will soon be illuminated by fireworks, releasing acrid smoke into the atmosphere. We revel in the sentimentality of new years and make resolutions which are never meant to be met. But it is an almost-possibility which we continue to make.

I still remember last year's resolution. It was meant to be an almost-resolution - an almost-promise to myself that I would learn to live again. And here I am, one year later, making more almost-promises. It is a deadly circle of unfulfilled promises, dreams and aspirations that we get ourselves stuck in year in and year out. But it is the hope we harbour in our hearts which make each unfulfilled year bearable and each almost-promise worth making.

I had no hope but everyone else had hope for me. So they took the dark away and thrust me into the light.

Fireworks explode into the night and I promise myself, once more, that I will learn to live again.

Lives Overlooked

The night bears down heavy blows on her friends. I wasn't her friend but I could feel the atmosphere thickening with suspense and ominousness.
 
She was one year my junior and I remembered watching her eat her lunch in the dining hall with her other Year Eleven friends. She had an elegance which only she seemed to possess - it made her stand out amongst the gaggle of makeup-heavy girls. She never really spoke to me with the exception of the occasional "hi" as we passed each other in the boarding house. Nothing more than that. It wasn't enough for me to think much about her as I graduated and left for university.

Three years later, I received word that she was in a coma. Lying in a hospital bed somewhere in the states, it was almost surreal to think that she would cross my mind again while I was sat in a small room in the English countryside. It reawoke images of a young girl in boarding school - a girl who I never really knew but wish I did now.





Letters praying for a speedy recovery would soon flood her family home - and mine would be one of them.












Hearts pulse wanting you back
Lights shine giving you strength
Lightning whips scaring away death
Please come home and give us faith


Get well soon.

Never did I think...

[silence]

Dispersed

Sink into similarity.
You do not see me;
You see us
and them
never me
he
she
or it.
Disappear into crowds;
Identity spreads thinly;
The many feet of too many
The many eyes of a united crowd.
All the same;
All a group
where no
one
exists.

Change

It was always the boys and I who were sat on the swings, trying to go as high as we could go. I was five and they were eight and ten - young cousins trying to outdo each other on the playground. Every now and then, someone would go running home in a flood of tears with an injury of some form. But despite each fall, each scrape, each bruise we still went back to the park to play competition again. Ten, eight and five, we were. Ten. Eight. And five.

The humid days in the park soon became a past we no longer talked about. We were now twenty, twenty-three and twenty-five. Days spent in office erased all recollection of the events of our childhood. Only on the rainy weekends spent indoors would I remember the days when the cousins and I played on the swings. I wondered if they remembered it as fondly as I and wondered if they thought about the past on gloomy days in the Australian outback just as I did on wintry days in the English countryside.

There was never much communication between us since we parted ways. They left for university long before I did and never really came back. I caught them during the small slivers of time we spent together, but the stories we could share soon dwindled and we were left with nothing much to say. Gone were the days in the park when we laughed, screamed, cried - perhaps, they were never meant to be relived over the Christmas dinner chat. Now dressed smartly in our work clothes (or at least I would like to think I dressed smartly), we left it all behind and all that's left is the acknowledgement that much has changed and that we could never revert back to the childhood we once had  fifteen years before.

August 23, 2010

Coming home was a bittersweet moment. Returning to see the familiar faces was meant to be a point of excitement but I knew the familiar faces also brought back a familiar pain. Is that what families are supposed to do. I don't see joy in my return and neither do they. The next time I return no one will turn a blind eye at me. Sometimes I wonder whether I should even come back but at the same time..can I stand being away for that long?

Sometimes I wish I never existed. Non-existence seems so much easier.

Lessons to be Learnt

"At some point she has to try"

"People are starting to notice...eventually, they're going to think: why bother?"

"I think she's very insecure about herself..."

"She is very vulnerable"

"..and so I think she is afraid to talk to people because she thinks they do not want to talk to her"

"but you see: people don't see that...people will not perceive that...they just see her the way her actions portray her..perception is a horrible thing"

"Yeah I know...because our perception of her is based on her actions..and they aren't reflecting her in the most positive light"

"Her actions and her inactions..."

"Umm..yes inactions...definitely"







Actions speak louder than words. Inaction speaks louder than actions.

And I curl up under the covers

while the night is ignited by fireworks

to prove 

that the unresponsive

can only ever lie alone

Stereo Beats

Songs are thumping out of the room above me and I'm not annoyed.

It is loud enough for me to pick out the words of the song and feel each beat reverberating throughout the building. The song evokes the images of dim rooms in an underground pub, brick walls and all. It never seemed more real than now. Remembering the days which no longer exist was more painful than having to talk about it and so I pen it down on a scruffy piece of paper ...only to lose it when morning comes.

There are no surprises in the fallen words which travelled only so far into space and time. They drop like birds shot out of the sky and I could only watch and set the hunting dogs upon their bodies. And when walking by the ford, I would dip my hand into the cold water and wish it would wash away the memories.

But of course the music stops and the images float away into the night as if to tease me by eluding me. The view of the ceiling now sets upon me and I realise that there is no stream to walk by or sky for which the birds (or the words) to fall from. I am left in a space and void which holds no meaning or emotions. It was all an imagination - a fiction of the mind.

December 15, 2010

The silence speaks,
we hide in the haze
and there's a sweet melody of birds
chirping in the night sky
never to be seen
not truly
not really
but we hear them still
fluttering in the cold air.

There's a ruin in the park.
It stands stone cold by the swings
waiting to be touched by
a child
waiting for the sun to reappear
and shine light on its decrepit state.
It's waiting for love
and affection
and possibly
nurturance.

I hold the idea, tight in my hands
that footsteps will soon be heard
in a distance
slowly getting louder
before disappearing again.
We love the light it brings
and dread the loneliness it leaves
But we want to be the ruin in the park
and wait for eternal light to shine someday.

And in silence it leaves

 graves lying idle in the dark

Reason

Why do any more?



Because we talk in our sleep.

11 December, 2010

Never a day spent not thinking,
not remembering,
not regretting.
Never a day thinking:
"I love life".

The tombstones of memory
moss-eaten, green,
and vile.
Never a day not mourning
Never a day wishing
for a quiet ending

Path through the woods
where mother nature litters leaves.
Trees dying on Christmas Eve.
Never a day not wanting love.
Never a day with blessings from above.

The light burns on a winter's morn
when the little one was born.
Mother of birth, hands of death.
Never a day wishing for change.
Never a day, ever again.

To those who didn't see it when I did.

Your Daughter

Victims at sixteen - it just didn't seem fair. Why did they have to lose their lives in that manner? Why did their parent have to weep over their emaciated bodies? It isn't fair, is it?

Remember your beautiful daughter running down the stairs on a sunny morning. Her sillohuette danced against the glare of the mid-summer's sun as you watched from the breakfast table. You sipped your coffee and pushed up your glasses to admire the child you brought up with love to love her family and herself.

Now look at her as she lies in her coffin - her face pale with malnourishment and death. You will never get to see her graduate; you will never get to see her get married; you will never get to see her be happy ever again. Where did the girl you saw dancing in the sunlight go? No longer in your arms, she now will rest in the ground and buried together with her is the sadness she never got to tell you about.

You swear to leave her bedroom untouched.

March 2, 2009

Sigh....another weekend gone and now I'm neck-deep in History notes and essays. It's been United Nations galore since early this morning and I'm brain-drained from all the shit we have to stuff ourselves with for tomorrow's test. I swear, I'd rather be in class.

I was talking to Anisa in the library this afternoon and it made me realise how much I miss 2008. It wasn't a wholly good year but at least there were the great times to look back on. Then again, 2009 has only started. Now that we're into March, it's a small chunk of 2009 gone but there's still another 10 months left to go through. A lot's gonna change in that time frame.

I have a much more optimistic roommate now as compared to before I left for exeat and that's a good thing. I guess the "many fishes in the sea" theory is starting to have a positive effect ...optimism is always welcomed. It's all (or at least, mostly) grins for room 404 now.

March 15, 2009

Doing C3 is like jumping off a cliff repeatedly hoping to fly. I'm sorry but I think you need to be a bird to do that....or an insect for that matter.

I'm done with Frankenstein btw. I'm sick of reading the damn book, sick of doing the damn exam paper, sick of having to see that black speck that lives two floors below me. So what the hell...screw Frankie and his inability to fit in.

A lot of things have happened over exeat and obviously I'm not the one to really say as I wasn't around. I mean, I can see the after effects of whatever has happened but that's only at a surface level. I've had my fair share of confusion before I left and I can't say it's sorted itself out yet - where the hell did I put my calculator? -_-"





I've got a message for a whiny little git who stayed back for exeat and who held up class the other day to make way for some drama:

I didn't think you were going to commit suicide and even if you had the guts to, I don't give a damn.





I've got a much nicer message for a really nice person:

Thank you for the acknowledgement. Want cake? =)

March 16, 2009

Somehow I feel as though the cockroach population in Room 404 is going to increase over the next few weeks. I just killed a tiny one which was making its way across Daphnie's pillow. And last week, I smacked a flying cockroach down with my Dr. Faustus book. Not a great way to get started on Literature, I can assure you.

Moving on from unwanted creepy crawlies, I had a pretty dead day today. Not because it was boring but because I spent 75% of my time walking around half asleep. Maybe I should have slept earlier last night but I had to read my cockroach guts-covered Dr. Faustus book for an essay I got for prep. Latin definitely doesn't agree with me. So at 1am I was still flipping aimlessly through Faustus. Quite a sad first-night back really. Had first two off before dashing of to Math this morning. Lunch also came slightly later than normal because Tiow didn't let us go 5 mins before the bell (like she usually does) so I was stuck lining up outside the dining hall together with the other unfortunate souls there.

There was supposed to be athletics today but due to a bout of rainfall it's been postponed to Monday next week. I can already imagine the whining and complaining going on in Jawahir. I don't blame them really.

Shit...History essay 

June 3, 2009

Yesterday's History paper really went down the drain. Really felt as though God was trying to take a nip at me for being the lazy ass I've been this entire year and a half in KTJ. Oh well, it's over and done with I suppose and any remorse will only come when the results come out in August.

Oh god, the thought of results day...

For now anyways, it's just literature and Maths so it should be pretty okay from now on. Corelli and Faustus are really getting to me though. The Italian soldier and the deranged German scholar really are a handful especially at times like this. Stresss

I really feel like blowing up the brains of some of the people who live here. It's a real pain in the ass to see their faces during exam time. The feeling of seeing their faces is equivalent of that of a gay bio teacher trying to instigate a fight by tossing your homework out in the corridors. Fuck you, you bloody gay shit.

The only way to survive Art Centre, I've realised, is not to care. Not to care about the bloody gits who get in your face, not to care about any crude remarks, not to care about the gossiping and the bitching, not to care about the eavesdropping(thus, say whatever the hell you want regardless of who is standing next to you), not to care about the assumptions made, not to care about the "friends" which you thought you had, not to care about the "friends" who get on your nerves....

I can go around rolling my eyes at anyone now and not worry about being threatened about them being gouged out of my skull(mainly because I'll be the one gouging eyeballs out instead).

That lousy little fake bugger better watch it....she'll be the next one to go flying over the corridor railings in this school.

January 9, 2009

I'm finally about to have my first real weekend Saturday in Mantin. Tiow is taking the day off because of a bit of food poisoning...but then again, there's no such thing as mild food poisoning in KTJ.

C2 has really drained me today. I was hoping to get some work done after the C2 paper but just before I could get myself to bogged down with work I got distracted by a bit of laundry. Everyone said that C1 was a bitch. Of course, by the screwed up looks on everyone's faces was enough to send the rest of us into cardiac arrest. Ah yes...the bitterness of life with the presence of redundant Maths papers. C2 was bearable...not impossible by any means but definitely redundant. My concern and interest in the area of a cylinder doesn't stretch that far and I can say the same thing for everyone else.

I rushed to what remained of my extra literature class after maths and stoned quite a fair bit admist the talk of Yeats' "Second Coming" before walking out just as knowledgable I was when I first walked in. Then, I dashed of for a bit of cross-country practice before dinner.

I should stop mucking about. I still have 5 papers to go and it's been a fucking bitch so far. Oh god...I can hear Hughes pulling up in front of Naquiyuddin now. God his car sounds like it needs a good bit of oiling.

Ah fuck...lights out.

Sleep-Talking

Slip into unconsciousness
on the bed
head resting on pillows.
You never thought you would go so suddenly
but neither did I.

A muffled voice in the night time
the silence emphasised.
so timid and unexpected, the words:
I'll get you
and you sink back into a drowsy, silent stupor.

Never did I think
or expect
or anticipate
the growing of the voice
finding it's way out of sleep
into your being.
Why did it come and take you
and claim you? Your youthful face
sinking into gauntness.
Your eyes infiltrated
by the vice
this voice set upon you.
Why did you have to die
before my eyes?

But you breathe again
one stormy night
The voice dies away in the distance
and I hold your hand
knowing it will soon be okay.
I listen in fear
for the voice returning in avengence,
but all I can hear
and possibly all that is left
is nothing
but the rustling of the trees
in the cold September winds.

Deception

Don't let the lazy think they are hardworkers.
Don't let the weak think they are strong.
Don't let the ill think they are recovered.

because doing so

doesn't make you their  friend;

it makes you a liar.

Nights Alight